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November 19, 2011

Great Recommendations for you

Hi there!

I've been getting back into my books lately, checking out the new library - don't ask, I'll just cry - and wishing for a second hand bookshop within an hours drive. Thankfully, I still have Amazon and Book Depository. I just don't know what I would have done if I had absolutely NO access to new reading materials.

{... no books and no reading make me go something something...}

Anyhow, I've picked up two really good books in the past 3 weeks. One I managed to fluke at the library, shock horror I know, and the other was an impulse purchase at Big W.

I want to say that I had seen this book ages ago when it was released in trade size, but I'm sick of them hogging space on the bookshelf, so I put it back and promptly forgot about it till 3 weeks ago. I'm talking about Deborah Harkness' wonderful 'A Discovery of Witches'.

This book is a long read, but I got tangled up in it and couldn't put it down (there went the afternoon, oh well). The story revolves around Diana Bishop, scholar, who turned her back on her witchy heritage as a child after her parents rather gruesome deaths. While researching at Oxford's Bodleian Library she came across a long lost book that is desired by all the supernaturals... vampires, witches and even the daemons want to get their paws on it. Realising that it is a magical book, she is drawn to it, but pushing that part of herself back, she returns it to the stacks. Fortunately for Diana, the first supernatural to turn up Matthew Clairmont, vampire and professor. He wants the book, but is drawn to the witch, and their illicit desire is the least of their troubles.

Set in the modern world, with flashbacks to times past, A Discovery of Witches is a fabulous read. The first in a series, I would recommend it for anyone who enjoyed Gladiatrix, or Kylie Chan.